Colombia

Book of Life Stories

Para Que Se Sepa – in English Let It Be Known – is a compilation of life stories told by people displaced by Colombia’s years of internal armed conflict and massive human rights violations.

“In these 19 interviews, peasant farmers, Indians and Afro-Colombians relate the great drama of forced displacement which they themselves have lived. Some of them have been displaced more than once, and all have them have left behind children, brothers, dead and disappeared spouses in the journey of their flight. They were born in isolated regions, very distant from each other and, nonetheless, all the testimonies have something which identifies them: terror. To abandon one’s roots, the labour accumulated during years, one’s family and throw oneself into the abyss, is one of the most difficult torments and uncertainties that a human being can live through.”

“(Para Que Se Sepa) purposefully lacks statistics; it is real stories about real people, which aspires to a fuller understanding of processes that the official version tends to cover up. To let the people themselves who have been forcibly displaced speak out in their own words is both a way to empower them and to complement traditional analytical and quantitative studies. We wanted to get to the bottom of the drama which millions of Colombians live without discrediting other analyses that are made in a more cold and distant manner.”

Download the book in pdf format (English version) (5 Mb)

Download the book cover in pdf format (English version) (2 Mb)